"If they retreat, they will definitely be killed." Excerpt from the book of Ilya Barabanov and Denis Korotkov about the history of "PMC Wagner"

Journalists Ilya Barabanov and Denis Korotkov wrote the book “Our Business - Death”, which talks about the take -off and fall of “Wagner PMC”. As in just a few years from a small group specializing in custom -made political murders, it turned into an alternative army in Russia, and then fell apart literally in a matter of weeks. The book was published by Medusa and StraightForward Foundation-a fund that helps to create non-certificate non-fiction about Russia. With their permission, the Mediazon publishes a fragment of how prisoners recruited by the Wagner PMC have tried to take Bakhmut for many months.

Cannon fodder

The recruiting campaign in the colonies unfolded just before Wagner's mercenaries in August 2022 entered the battle for Bakhmut and bogged down in it for many months.

At that time, in the assault on Bakhmut there was an obvious military meaning. The Russian army continued to keep the eastern part of the Kharkov region under its control, including a small town of raisins, which was considered as a bridgehead for future offensive operations. It was assumed that after Wagner would capture Bakhmut, Russia will be able to start the final seizure of the Donetsk region of Ukraine in two directions, advancing from the north and east to Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and other cities.

But, as they say in such cases, something went wrong. At first it turned out that no quick storm of Bakhmut would happen, and Ukrainian soldiers were beating literally for every house in this city. Then, in September 2022, the Ukrainian army carried out an extremely successful, unexpected and rapid counterattack operation in the Kharkov region: breaking through the front line, the Ukrainians managed to free most of the region in a few weeks, returning a number of cities at once - including the same raisins. In mid -September, mass burials made by the Russians were discovered there; The Ukrainian prosecutor of the region said that at least 445 bodies are civilians .

After the Russian army lost a bridgehead for a further advance to the south, all military experts agreed that there was no more strategic or operational meaning in the assault. However, Prigozhin continued to fulfill the task set for him. Such is the specificity of the “power vertical”, which Vladimir Putin built for more than twenty years: if the order is given, he must be executed, but not revised or more recognized as erroneous.

In connection with the massive influx of new mercenaries, Wagner had to expand its infrastructure: the appearance of many convicts in the Krasnodar Molkino could cause unnecessary conversations and threatened security, and the landfill itself was simply not designed for so many recruits. So Wagner had a new base, where prisoners were taken from the airport in the Rostov region - this base was located on the territory of the self -proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic, not far from its capital Lugansk.

The prisoners often came there even without personal belongings - the colonies administration allowed them to take a pack of cigarettes at best. “Of course, they had to buy everything to us,” said one recruiting man. - And towels, and soap, and toothpaste. And socks and panties. We dressed as it should. Two pairs of berets, jackets, three pairs of costumes. And the sneakers gave. There were no problems with this at all. The boys somehow argued among themselves: "Damn, we are like cannon fodder, we will go, no?" One says: "What a cannon meat in FIGs, so many millions have swelled for us, what ammunition we have!" "

At the base near Lugansk, the newly -made Wagnerians were prepared: as one of the former prisoners said, who later ended up in Ukrainian captivity, the instructors taught them how to use Kalashnikov’s automatic machine and how to storm the trench. In the same place, the Wagner commanders clearly showed that Prigozhin, threatening the deserters with the death penalty, did not joke: as Wagnerian who fell into the Ukrainian captive, when one of the prisoners fled from the base, but came across local policemen, he was brought back, tied to a pillar and shot.

The recruits of Wagner could communicate with loved ones only through a special STRIM application, developed by order of Prigozhin's companies. According to one of the mercenaries, all the conversations were recorded and listened. The tougher of steel and punishment: if earlier a fighter could put a marine container specially designed for these purposes, tie and beat only for serious misconduct (for example, for fights with colleagues or open disobedience to the commanders), now it was possible to get into this position just for talking with journalists .

Despite the expectations associated with the expenses for the ammunition, the prisoners acted for the Wagner commanders exactly what is cannon fodder. If in Syria and Africa they tried to create an image of people who are carefully treated with their personnel, then with the arrival of a huge number of newcomers without the slightest combat experience of PMC tactics changed. In the Soviet years, such people were called “contingent”: it was not necessary to expect special training or discipline from prisoners, but it was necessary to keep this discipline in conditions of military operations. For this, Vagner used its usual tool - violence. The commanders of the detachments of prisoners - the same prisoners as their subordinates - received an order from the authorities to kill anyone who tries to escape from the battlefield; The failure to fulfill this order threatened the death of the commanders themselves.

The Ukrainian military was amazed to observe how Wagnerians use the tactics of the "meat assault". Of the ten convicts of ten people, each followed one after another at equal distances from each other - and continued to advance, even when the Ukrainians shot those who walked ahead, even when any ordinary detachment of a regular army would retreat to pick up the killed and wounded. After returning from Bakhmut, one Ukrainian soldier said that he had to turn to a psychologist for help, because he did not understand how to fight: “We put them from a machine gun by dozens, and new dozens go on you, and you put them again and put them again.” Another Ukrainian officer found an explanation for this crazy approach: “If they move forward, they have at least some chance to survive. If they retreat, they will definitely be killed. ”

Performing combat missions in Bakhmut, Prigozhin was not considered losses. Near the Wagner chapel at the base in Molkino, dozens of graves of fighters, whose bodies were nobody to take away, quickly began to appear: in a few months the cemeterygrew seven times, and in the spring of 2023 the local authorities even tried to ban new burials there. It is not known exactly how many Wagnerians died during the assault on Bakhmut, but the analysis conducted by journalists shows that there were at least 6,291 people. Prigozhin himself evaluated the losses of his mercenaries during the assault on the city of 20 thousand people, but, most likely, he understood the true scale of losses. It is even more impossible to say how many of these people died in a battle with Ukrainians, and how many by the hands of their own commanders.

The hammer of retaliation

In mid-November 2022, the main Russian news was a video in which 57-year-old Evgeny Nuzhin was killed with a sledgehammer.

A native of Kazakhstan, nun, back in Soviet times, joined the army and continued to serve in the internal Russian troops until the mid-1990s. In 1999, the court sentenced him to 24 years in prison-nun in a certain “mess”, as he called it, killed one person and wounded the other; He once tried to escape from the colony, for which he received another four years. By the summer of 2022, Juzhin served more than three quarters of his term, was “in authority”, could use the phone and tablet, and even, being in conclusion, married for the second time. Nevertheless, when Prigozhin arrived in his Ryazan colony and invited the prisoners to go to the front, volunteered and signed a contract with Wagner. Like the other prisoners, the nun passed the week of preparation at the training ground near Lugansk, and in early September ended up at the front line - and two days later he surrendered to Ukrainians.

In captivity with Nugin, the journalist of the Ukrainian publication Censor.net , and then his other colleagues, spoke . Talking with captured Russian soldiers after February 24, in general, became a kind of separate genre: hundreds of such interviews can be found on YouTube and in the Ukrainian media. As far as they can trust and how these materials are generally ethical, a separate question: the Geneva Convention guarantees prisoners of war “Protection from the curiosity of the crowd”, and some international journalistic organizations believe that interviews with Russian soldiers violate this and a number of other points of the Convention.

One way or another, to his interlocutors, the nun said that he was immediately recorded in Wagner to surrender. According to him, he had relatives in Western Ukraine - so he categorically opposed the Russian invasion from the very beginning and would now like to help Ukraine. Later it turned out that these statements contradicted the content of social networks, which the nun continued to lead from prison: in them he placed videos in support of Putin’s policy and against the “Bandera”, posted Soviet and imperial flags, as well as quotes about the power of the “Russian spirit”.

Despite the abundance of various interviews with captured Russians, the case of the Nun aroused special interest and spread widely into the media: for the first time the former prisoner confirmed that Wagner was gaining people from prisons and told the details of this process from the inside.

What happened next, as long as you can only assume. It is known that Russia and Ukraine have at least several channels through which the parties are negotiating the exchange of prisoners. First of all, these are the Ministry of Defense of both countries; Apparently, the head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, who in 2014, agreed with the Ukrainian authorities on the release of the SBU, journalists of the Russian propaganda site Life.ru , has his own contact with Kiev. There were such contacts with the Main Intelligence Directorate and many field commanders operating in the east of Ukraine in 2014 - one of the authors of this book then several times acted as an informal mediator or guarantor of security when exchanging prisoners. Obviously, after Wagner was fully involved in a full -scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Evgeny Prigozhin also appeared on the exchange of interests of interest to him.

It is unknown as well as the nun got into the lists for exchange. The Ukrainian authorities promised to handle prisoners of war in accordance with the Geneva Convention, but how much the recruited prisoner falls under its action is not quite clear. On November 11, Ukraine announced the next exchange with Russia; Prochrevsky blogger Anastasia Kashevarova at the same time claimed that he was walking along the Wagner line. Later, the Kiev source told reporters that the Russians offered “very good conditions” as a NUZHIN, and the adviser to the office of Ukrainian president Mikhail Podolyak said that Juzhin signed an exchange for exchange voluntarily.

On November 12, a video called “The Hammer of Retribution” appeared in one of the telegram channels associated with Prigozhin. It showed Eugene Nuzhin. “I was on the streets of Kyiv, where I received a blow to the head, as a result of which I lost consciousness,” said the mercenary. “I woke up in this basement, where they told me that they would judge me.” After that, the Nuzhin hit the head several times several times, and he died. Shortly after the publication of the video, Evgeny Prigozhin said that this was a “excellent directorial work”. “[Nuni] did not find happiness in Ukraine, but met with unkind, but fair people,” added the owner of Wagner. “It seems to me that this film is called the Dog - Dog Death.”

By that time, it was already known that for violation of discipline, Wagnerians could shoot or hang former prisoners who became mercenaries. But the execution taken to the camera with the help of a sledgehammer, which obviously referred to the story with the torture and killing of the Syrians El Ismail in 2017 (his Wagnerians also scored this construction tool), it seemed that even a lot of visited Russian society was to shock. I had to, but did not shock.

Presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov did not comment on the publication of the video, saying that "this is not our business." Prigozhin himself in a company mocking manner in writing turned to the Russian Prosecutor General with a request to check the circumstances of the murder, reporting along the version that the Nun recruited and then executed the American intelligence services. Whether this check was carried out is unknown. The fate of Yevgeny Nuzhin, a citizen of Russia, whom the unknown subjected to brutal extrajudicial reprisal, apparently, did not interest the investigating authorities.

“On the papers”, as it is called in Russia, the nun continues to either sit or serve. At the time when this book was prescribed, the loved ones of the former prisoner never received his body - and they are unlikely to receive at all. Back in 2014, one of the authors faced the fact that Russian volunteers who wanted to defend the “Russian world”, but did not really understand where and why they went, disappeared into the Donbass mines abandoned because of the war, and their relatives then tried to find out what happened to their loved ones for years. “We understand that the one who gives us this body will be the guilty involved in his murder in any way. Therefore, I think that now this is impossible, ”the daughter of a Nuzhin told reporters. - What happened is on the conscience of the people who did this. This will all return to them. ”

Meanwhile, the Wagnerians, together with representatives of the Russian authorities and the Kremlin propaganda, tried to make a sledgehammer a symbol of a certain justice that overtakes the “traitors”. Unknown people threw sledgehammer into the territory of the Finnish embassy in Moscow. Prigozhin sent a sledgehammer to the European Parliament (jokingly) and gave it to the commander of the Chechen detachment Akhmat (seriously). The leader of the Just Russia Parliamentary Party, Sergei Mironov and the mayor of the Tatar Bugulma, posed with a sledgehammer.

Probably, the matter was not only about these people's love for illegal violence: by the end of 2022, the Wagner PMC and personally its owner had tangible political capital. After Prigozhin admitted that he was heading Wagner, the activities of PMCs became absolutely public. Billboards with calls to conclude a contract with Wagner (“join the winners” team, the “w“ w “w“ “waits for you”) appeared on the streets of large Russian cities. In St. Petersburg, the PMC Wagner Center opened - an office building for 26.5 thousand square meters, which was declared a place "to generate new ideas in order to increase Russia's defense capabilities." Prigozhin made more and more public statements - and they became more and more impudent: hecalled to block YouTube in Russia and openly accused the governor of St. Petersburg Alexander Beglov, with whom he had long conflicting, to create a criminal group in order to expand budget funds.

The creator of Wagner constantly distributed interviews and comments to reporters; True, with some of them he talked completely in the gangster manner: he called one a small and dirty bastard, the other “reminded of popular wisdom: do not stick your nose to where the dog does not stick.” Prigozhin traditionally did not answer the questions of Denis Korotkov for many years and even, having violated his own rule, never published these requests in his channels. The only time he changed himself in the winter of 2023, when Korotkov once again addressed Prigirus with a question about the losses of Wagner near Hsham. The answer came in half an hour and was quite personal: “Korotkov, fuckers, you know that I think you are complete shit! Let all the same questions ask another journalist, and I will answer them culturally. But it’s even ashamed to sit with you. ”

In the Kremlin, they looked through all this violent activity through the fingers - and did not refute the publications that after the start of the invasion of Ukraine and the combat successes of the Wagner PMC, Prigozhin entered the close circle of Vladimir Putin, who could even criticize the Russian military strategy. Meanwhile, the battle for Bakhmut, despite all the "meat assaults", did not end. Gradually, at the first wave of the concluded concluded, half -year contracts began to expire, and they began to return home: Prigozhin held their word, and his new employees appreciated this. “I believe that [the Wagnerians] opened the door to me,” Stanislav Bogdanov, who scored a judge in Novgorod, enthusiastically told me to reporters, but thanks to Prigozhin to be freed, having served less than half the term. - This company expands, does not throw its own. We will constantly have money. We will have work, even if this war is over. I have new comrades, new friends, new family. I am devoted to these people. "

The worst nightmares of victims of crimes committed to the front, and their relatives began to come true. When the sister of the murdered judge saw a video in which Prigozhin met with Bogdanov and other released prisoners who were injured in the war, she became ill. A resident of Kaluga Anna Boltynyuk, having learned that one of the men who brutally raped and killed her daughter Jan, went to the freedom, turned to the prosecutor’s office, the FSIN and the president who pardoned the killer. Ей ответили , что по закону никто не должен был согласовывать с ней помилование.

Благодаря Пригожину тысячи убийц и насильников выходили на свободу после шести месяцев на фронте. Было очевидно, что не пройдет и несколько недель, как кто-то из них совершит новое преступление. So it happened. Уже в апреле 2023 года в городке под Кировым Иван Россомахин, отсидевший всего пару лет из своего 14-летнего срока, зарезал 85-летнюю соседку. Вскоре подобные новости стали обыденностью. В Краснодарском крае бывший заключенный вместе с друзьями убили двух аниматоров и сожгли их машину. В Приморском крае освободившийся вагнеровец задушил и сжег знакомую. Под Красноярском другой мужчина поджег дом, где находились мать и дочь, обе женщины погибли . В Липецке вагнеровец убил свою четырехлетнюю дочь.

Сам Пригожин заявлял , что к лету 2023 года отбыли свой контракт и получили помилование 32 тысячи мужчин — и всего 0,25% из них совершили новые преступления. Впрочем, главной проблемой для него было не то, что бывшие зеки окажутся на свободе и начнут терроризировать своих соседей. Важнее всего ему было добиться боевого результата, ради которого затевалась эпопея с вербовкой в колониях, то есть взять Бахмут. Штурмовать город «Вагнер» начал в августе 2022 года, но прошла осень, началась зима, а развязка все не наступала. И тогда Пригожин нашел себе новых врагов.

Editor: Mika Golubovsky

Илья Барабанов, Денис Коротков. « Наш бизнес — смерть ». StraightForward Foundation , «Медуза». Рига, 2024.